


longer ago in Santiago

by sheffiesharpe



Series: At Least There's The Football [15]
Category: Sherlock (TV), The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: ALTTF, Anthea is totally a ninja, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, F/M, Future, M/M, Multi, One-Shot, Past, Santiago - Freeform, at least there's the football
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 20:08:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5599201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheffiesharpe/pseuds/sheffiesharpe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Illya Kuryakin was once in Santiago. He was younger then, and there were many things he didn't know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	longer ago in Santiago

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Santiago](https://archiveofourown.org/works/297054) by [sheffiesharpe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheffiesharpe/pseuds/sheffiesharpe). 



I.  
_Paris, 1965_

The hotel is exquisite and it had damn well better be. The never-terribly-long time it takes for Waverly to find them a new assignment will be spent nursing more hurts than Napoleon is strictly comfortable with, given the state of things. It _was_ easier, in so many respects, working alone. Perhaps in those days the barbed wire, the blind exits when Plans A, B, and C went pear-shaped, the occasional bullet sparking at the heels were more dangerous, more likely to lead to a trackable blood trail, dead-ends, or a dead spy, but no matter what, they didn't lead to this: Illya confined to the room with a deep shrapnel cut in his calf and Gaby shuttered in a decadently curtained bed, resting a concussion. And Napoleon himself is still finding flakes of charred wool here and there, the remnants of a perfectly good jacket, because the explosion was rather a bit too close for comfort.

He settles gingerly on the sofa, pleased to find that the back of his neck no longer feels tender. Just a scorch, then, not a proper burn.

In an armchair, his bandaged leg propped on the coffee table in as much acquiescence to healing as Napoleon's ever seen Peril manage, Illya chews his lower lip in a most un-perilous way.

"Mission successful and all that, Peril. At ease." Two days ago, maybe when they were all just pleased to still be alive, Illya had been the most guardedly happy with it. A stockpile of weapons research went up in the smoke they all coughed out. Illya had gotten to shoot no fewer than half a dozen T.H.R.U.S.H. agents and had broken the neck of one with his bare hands. It'd been fun, in its way, until the self-destruct mechanism in _something_ was tripped.

Illya gives him a sideways glance and freezes in that unnerving way he has, but his hands are still. His jaw's pressed forward, but it doesn't look like he's trying to bite through his own teeth.

"She'll be fine," Napoleon ventures, his gaze tipped toward the closed bedroom door. This morning, Gaby was already trying to sneak music, arguing that a dose of Elvis Presley was exactly what she needed. Illya had carried the machine out of the room, for which he also got an earful, as carrying a sizeable Zenith radio/phonograph across a suite wasn't in _his_ doctor's orders. Napoleon had only poured another cup of coffee and sighed as Gaby tried to bargain—rest now, Elvis later—and Illya threatened to throw the radio out the window and also assassinate Elvis unless she kept to her schedule of quiet and still. When she finally acquiesced, and Illya sat on the bed's edge to tuck the blankets around her, she flicked the edge of his bandages.

The soft sound of their kiss—quick, chaste, _dull_ —felt as much a sign of rightness in the world—as much as there could be, at the moment—as the coffee. But now Peril was being peculiar, and at the mention of Gaby, Illya shakes his head, a flicker of guilt and also negation.

"I know." His chest rises and falls, and he nods, firm. "I know."

And Napoleon believes him. This is their progress: in two years, Illya will trust Gaby will be all right—within reason, by whatever complex calculations Peril uses to assess Gaby-related concerns, anyway.

So Napoleon picks up the newspaper. He's barely gotten through the stocks report when movement and a steady, muffled thump make him put the sheets down. Peril's slowly punching his own thigh, his right hand meeting muscle in a way that, if the man had skin or blood like normal humans', he'd have a bruise the size of a highball glass. Illya's eyebrows are drawn low, and though he's no longer chewing his lip, he's chewing over something.

Napoleon fixes his gaze on the edge of Illya's left eye. If nothing else, in ninety-seven seconds, Illya will flare at being stared at.

But the ninety-eighth second passes, and Napoleon is on the verge of deciding that it's certainly late enough to start drinking, even though he could still get breakfast from room service without any cajoling at all. When a full two minutes have passed, Illya still thumping his fist into his thigh, Napoleon still peering at the side of Illya's head, Illya finally moves.

When he does, he moves all at once, bringing the chair closer—"You shouldn't," Napoleon gets out before he gives up on the rest of the phrase—and folding himself into it again. The silence spins out again, and Napoleon considers the waiting game he's playing to be among the most masterful displays of self control he's ever made.

Finally, _finally_ , Illya raises his head and looks Napoleon in the eye.

"I need your help, Cowboy."

Napoleon is sure he's hearing things. But Illya's still looking at him, the words perfectly clear. What Napoleon wants to do is make a dozen jokes at once, and maybe it's because they're all crowding into his mouth at once that he doesn't say anything. Gaby would say it's that Napoleon is starting to be a moderately decent human being—when it suits him—and he knows how difficult it is, still, for Illya to say something like this. It's one thing to need help when you're drowning in a shipyard or strapped in a torturer's chair or running away from an exploding building. They've come to trust that help is coming. None of them needs to ask. Maybe that's even more dangerous. Likely so, with Sanders and Oleg still unnervingly at the other end of the line more often, Napoleon thinks, than even Peril wants. But that's the field. Take it as it comes. Here, while they're not _doing_ anything, asking for help is something else entirely, and Peril asking _him_ —well.

Napoleon puts the newspaper aside. A year ago, he knows he would have opened it again, held it up between them. This, also, is a kind of progress, according to Gaby.

Illya says, "I need an expensive hobby."

Napoleon opens his mouth, closes it again. If he's going to get punched, this is likely the place, because there are so many easy, _amusing_ answers. He goes for one of the safer ones, because it's true. "You haven't bought enough engagement rings already?" Gaby's on her fifth. Every time it gets broken, or the tracking device gets fried, she demands a replacement. She's angling for real diamonds. Because the cost comes out of Waverly's budget, generally, and the rings have a bad chance of survival, she's had to do with cut glass for everyday use.

That actually gets _nearly_ a flicker of a grin. A subcutaneous twitch. But the gravity returns.

"As many as I need. But no. This is," he says, and the phrase dies. He clarifies. "I need to _appear_ to have an expensive hobby." The stubborn set comes onto his face, which means he's about to somehow make whatever his problem is Napoleon's fault. "A thing that seems like what you have done to Gaby, with _accessories_. Or rare liquor."

Well, Napoleon can't argue about the sunglasses fetish they both have, though Illya has no room to talk. More than half of her working wardrobe is things he's chosen. The liquor jab is all for Napoleon. Gaby's palate never left the chop shop. She'll drink home-brewed Romanian moonshine and not even blink. He's fairly certain the jars of _ţuică_ she came back with were distilled using the carburetor she was really haggling for. The hangover was brutal, but that night, they got Illya to laugh, honest-to-Lenin laugh.

Peril continues the list of things on which Napoleon wastes his disgusting capitalist salary: horse races (it was part of their cover), records (he buys them for Gaby so she can annoy Illya), cards (though he would love to play more often, his penchant for cheating places it among his more dangerous vices, so he only does it often enough to keep his hand in, so to speak, because it's been useful before). Napoleon holds up a hand to stop him; the words feel like something he's spooled up for a long time, and if this is how he's avoiding saying the real heart of the matter, it could go on all day.

"Right. I'm a decadent, corruptive influence. We all knew that before we even went to Rome. What are you _really_ angling for here, Peril?"

Illya exhales one of those sighs that feels like it must contain all of the air in the room, and he hangs his head, defeated. "Money laundering."

Well. That's got his attention. "You owe somebody?" He can't quite imagine it, Peril owing anyone anything _financial_. Napoleon's never seen anyone so uninterested in money, even to the point of being hostile to it as a concept. He doesn't balk at spending the U.N.C.L.E. budget because that gets turned into the mechanics of the mission, but the salary they're all getting—barely even pocket money, by Napoleon's estimation—makes no appearances. Illya reads the books hotels use as decoration, plays chess against himself, barely drinks, and eats whatever is put in front of him. Napoleon will never say it out loud, because he quite likes his teeth, but that's certainly part of Illya's past. The conversation suddenly becomes terrifying: if this has something to do with Illya's mother, there's no way Napoleon's _not_ going to end up with a knife in his eye. At the same time, a second feeling comes thrumming in his blood: if someone's trying to blackmail Peril, that won't do. The kind of "won't do" that makes Napoleon unsentimental about putting a bullet in someone's chest. Oleg does manipulates Illya often enough, waving the red flags of shame and pride and patriotism at a known bull. It's simply _unacceptable_ if some even more nefarious third party is involved.

Again Illya shakes his head, then the negation gets caught in a kind of shrug. "I need to get money to a place, without trace. Like your retirement fund." He raises an eyebrow, but the correct haughtiness isn't really there.

"If you've got collectors, Peril—or someone you know is in trouble—we've got a few other options."

Illya bats the words out of the air. "It's a gift." His forehead crinkles more. "Recurring."

"Where?" If it's already a Swiss account, or something in the Maldives, that would be nice.

"An address in Santiago. Chile. Cash is best, small bills, local currency."

Unexpected. "That's a tall order." On one hand, it's flattering to know Peril thinks he can simply magic money all over the planet; on the other, it's evidence that nothing Napoleon does escapes his notice. At least Illya seems to agree that the task is difficult. Napoleon's own pride means he's not going to admit he's not sure he can even pull that off. It certainly will take some thinking. But—South America does have convenient Catholic leanings. Apparent charity, when coupled with the right donation, might work. Small, handsome reliquaries _are_ in his expertise.

"Do you care how it arrives?" It's possible the church connection is not quite what Comrade Kuryakin had in mind.

"No. I don't care. I don't even want to know," Illya says. "I only want to know it is done. And then we will never speak of it again, to anyone." His eyes flicker to the side, where Gaby is sleeping.

He shouldn't say anything else. It was impressive enough that Illya came to him with the request. Napoleon knows that means something. But Napoleon also hasn't lived this long by accepting ignorance. "Tell me why I'm doing this, who this money's for." The _or I won't do it_ hangs unspoken. Illya knows it's there. Napoleon knows Illya's gun is also somewhere nearby because it always is, and _You'll do it because you don't want to die, Solo_ is also a possible answer. The most probable, really. Honestly, that's what he's expecting, and he's already planning where he'll throw his coffee cup if he needs to: the square of coffee table below Illya's head and throat, where he's hunched over his own lap, his elbows braced on his thighs. The shattering china might distract him for a moment. He's also expecting Illya to tell him to go fuck himself, or Illya to turn away and murder the conversation, if not him.

He's not expecting Illya to look up with a nearly bewildered look on his face and say, "My daughter."

II.  
_Santiago, November 1962_

The mission has been fulfilled. Anton Mironov, who murdered his field partners for smuggled Third Reich gold in Buenos Aires and thought he could disappear in Chile, who thought the thin air and mists of the Andes could somehow cover his tracks, is dead, and Illya has a notebook, full of encoded information, that had been in Mironov's pocket. The information was not part of his assignment; Oleg does not know the notebook exists, and there is no way to tell him. Illya also has the gold, actual ingots, seven of them, each as long as his hand and miserable in their weight. But Oleg—the KGB, more broadly—knows about the gold, know exactly how much was Mironov's price, and Illya knows that even the slightest scrape upon the bars will be noted, any sign that someone has tried to shave off a little here or there, when it's coming back in Illya's hands. Not even the notebook would compensate for that. But the gold doesn't tempt him; it annoys him. The bag is heavy, unwieldy, an unpleasant reminder, and now he must guard it. The gold in his care is more dangerous than anything he could meet alone on the uncertain streets of Santiago. And it's his burden for another three days. His transport is scheduled to arrive on Thursday.

He could go to a hotel downtown, but decides at the last minute to find something less in the way. He walks until he sees a woman sweeping her stoop. There is a cloth sitting upon the windowsill, below perfectly clean glass. Behind the glass, the curtains are neatly hemmed. She is the type of woman who would not recommend a dirty guest house.

When he asks for directions to a likely lodging house, and he is careful to specify that what he wants is cleanness and quietness, she pauses, looks long at him.

He tries to hide the impatience he feels; he knows he doesn't sound Chilean. He certainly doesn't look it. So he lets her look, and he looks back with as benign an expression as he can muster.

She says, "I have a room to rent." She names a price, says it includes meals, a private room, a shared bath.

He says yes. Then he has no cause to leave, which means no cause to leave his precious burden alone or carry it through the streets of Santiago.

She leads him into the house, says he is welcome to look at the room first, but he's already made up his mind. This is ideal. He summons his cover, and he's grateful it's one that allows him to be somber, serious: he is a writer. He would appreciate this uninterrupted time to work. His government sent him: he is to be the next Ostrovsky. He is taking out the copy of _How the Steel was Tempered_ when she says yes, it will be quiet, no trouble. The cover works well, for its ridiculousness: no one ever lets him get so far as to even say what book he is writing. No one wants to flip through the scribbled notes he carries. It grants an invisibility he's longed for before.

There is something else that distracts the woman, though, a sad, weary look around her eyes. She wears a wedding ring, and she is older than he is, perhaps forty, or a little younger and made older by life. But her hair is thick and dark, her spine straight in a way Illya recognizes.

"At the top of the stairs," she says, "and to the left."

He goes. She stays at the small kitchen table, half of the charge for the room in her hand. In the shared washroom, there is a razor and lather brush, so the husband is still alive. But he is not at home.

In Illya's room, there is a bed and one window. Everything is clean, simple, and he's even more pleased with the choice. He puts the Ostrovsky novel—his inspiration, should anyone care to look—and the notebook that is intended to be his manuscript on the bedside table. Mironov's notebook and the gold remain in the suitcase he carries, and he slides the whole between the bed frame and the wall, covers everything with the thrown-back blanket.

By Tuesday morning, he discovers that the husband is gone for the week. He is a miner who returns only on weekends, but he has a good wife. When Illya is eating the breakfast the woman has made, he watches her dust a photograph of them together, the cloth gentle on the image. She loves him. The man has pale hair, pale eyes, and his hands rest lightly on his wife's waist. There are no photos of children, but there is a cradle beside her bed, old, smooth wood, perhaps the one that rocked her or her husband when they were infants. Illya knows this because he has been in every room in the house. As she goes about her day, he is a shadow in empty rooms, checking, always checking, for a sign that someone is listening, someone is watching. When he finds nothing untoward, when the rented room is only that, when the sad, dutiful woman is only a sad, dutiful woman, the knowledge settles strange and spiky in his chest. It's been a long time since he's felt this way. He tries to explain it to himself: he feels _alone_ , and it is not at all lonely. It's peaceful. It feels wrong. He leaves the door open as a kind of experiment, and he suspects he's wishing someone would come rushing through with raised fists or a brandished blade. No one does.

For a while, he reads. He's read the book before, doesn't hate it, but he doesn't love it, either, and when he thinks about himself even pretending to make art, even propaganda thinly veiled as art, he almost laughs. When he was a boy, his mother called him an artist. She let him choose her earrings, her scarves, her hats, her shoes.

When his father was on his way home from some trip, some party function, she opened closet and chest. Already wearing the dress she chose for the occasion, she said, _Illyusha, how shall we finish it?_ For the dress was only the beginning. There was a greater whole, the way a sketch became something else after the application of paint, or a simple melody transformed with the addition of harmony and rhythm. And it did not matter what he chose, she wore it, and because she loved that he had chosen it, the indigo silk scarf and vermilion cloisonné earrings and belt with silver and ivory buckle looked as though they belonged together. Always, his father said she looked beautiful. Always, he meant it, because nothing she wore could make her otherwise. But his father never knew Illya had helped in these choices, and by the time Illya understood how to make the choices better—stolen glimpses at Western fashion magazines that should not even be in Russia, looking that could never look like looking—his father was taken from them. After, Illya still helped her with accessories, with the finer points, and he was fifteen, swinging kettlebells and running until his lungs ached, until he was stronger and faster than anyone he knew, when he understood that he and his mother had been doing the same thing.

Sometimes, he hears her voice in his head, in contexts much different than he remembers. When he feels cornered. When he wonders if _this_ moment will be his end. When he wonders if there is anyone left who will mourn him. _How shall we finish it?_ It's because he has no good answer to the question, he thinks, that he's still alive.

But the too-familiar bitter laughter feels wrong in his throat after so long, so he does something he knows he's good at, that he knows he can do well, that he feels, sometimes, like he was born to do: he does push-ups. He does them one-handed and then inverted, holding his body upside down until the blood rushes to his face and even his abdominal muscles shake from steadying himself. When it feels like he can't do another, he lowers his chest to the floor, exhales once, and pushes again, pushes until his palms actually leave the floor, until he can clap his hands beneath his chest and catch himself again.

After the seventh of those, the woman is standing in the empty doorway, drawn by the noise.

He musters _Perdón_.

She ignores the apology, and she regards him as he sits back on his heels. Now his nerves are alight. It should trouble him that the flicker of concern—was it foolish to exhaust himself so? will he wish he had stopped sooner?—makes him feel better. But she doesn't lunge with a knife, doesn't draw a gun. She takes one solid breath, and she says, "There is dinner," and turns and leaves. She goes to her own bedroom and closes the door behind her.

He wipes away the sweat, and as soon as his skin feels dry, the chill returns. It's always there, like there's some part of him forever exiled east of the River Lena. It makes no sense. He knows his father is probably dead, that he has been for years, and the sooner it happened, the kinder it was. But still: Illya is cold, even though Santiago is warm, approaching its own summer. He puts on his sweater again.

Downstairs, there's a covered plate waiting, and a glass of water, another, smaller, of red wine. He sips the water, takes one small bite that contains a bit of everything on his plate. He chews, swallows, and waits. When nothing strange happens, he eats everything. He doesn't drink the wine. He thinks she is thrifty enough to drink it herself, and that gives him some small satisfaction: he hopes she does. She works hard. Her husband works in a mine, surely bringing home bits of earth even under his nails, but there is no speck of dirt anywhere. The men's shirts she hangs at the window are creamy white with washing, patched neatly.

***

When there are only three hours until he will leave for the airport and Moscow, he gathers his things. As soon as he lifts the case that holds the gold, he feels what is missing: one bar. Against the six, one seems so little. One, also, he knows, is enough to damn a man, even the memory of him, for an age. Illya doesn't even hide the gun when he steps into the hall, and he wishes he were more surprised. Mostly, he is angry with himself. Of course she took it while he ate dinner alone. Of course she can move quietly in her own home. Of course he is a fool that he did not check it last night. What does surprise him is that the woman is waiting for him at the table, her hands folded in plain view, her dark hair freshly combed and curled. She doesn't look into the gun barrel when he raises it, and for that, he admires her. Her hands tremble, though.

"Return it," he says. He doesn't want to shoot her. She didn't take Mironov's notebook. He feels fairly certain she didn't even touch it.

She says, "I didn't steal your gold."

His hands itch to throw the table, to send the candlesticks, which are short and plain, crashing into the shelf she dusts every day. He steps forward and forward and forward until the pistol's muzzle presses against her forehead. She is all-over shaking now, but still she is talking, slowly, clearly, despite the quick little breaths she takes.

"I hid it. I will give it back. I only want a favor. A very little thing." She glances up at him. "A very insignificant thing for a man like you."

When the pressure against her forehead makes her head tip back, she says, "Please."

He's not sure why he asks what she wants. He could make her tell him where the gold is hidden. Without him even hurting her much, she would say. Civilians always think they could resist pain, but they can't. Even the best agents can't, after a point. Everyone has a breaking point. He could also shoot her and probably find it himself. He knows how to search, knows how people think. But he asks her, "What thing?"

She says, "I want a child. My husband is a good man, but he cannot give me one. I prayed. I prayed for a miracle. We have prayed that miracle together, Rigoberto and I." Her trembling hands press together, as though she prays now. She probably does, in the private place behind her eyes, prays for her life, and he should laugh. Like a good Communist, he should laugh in the face of her faith. Like a good KGB agent, he should do whatever is necessary to get back the missing ingot, and he should go.

What he does is stare at her, and the gun and her skin no longer touch.

She keeps talking. "You are leaving. You will never see me again. For you," she says, "for men like you, such a small thing. You will forget before you even leave Chile. But if I did not try, when God has put an answer before me, one last chance—I would remember my cowardice forever." Her inhale stutters, but she tries to smile, tries, he thinks, to look pretty.

_How shall we finish this?_

With his trousers only undone and his shoes still on, the gun resting upon the nightstand, they finish this. It is exactly the second time he's had sex, and it feels the same this time as it did the first, years ago. He is thinking of what he needs to do next, how he will cross the city, what will happen when he returns to Moscow, and his body is doing something else, coiling tight and releasing. The orgasm feels like it happens to someone else. When he finishes, though, the woman is laughing, a small, frantic sound, and she is crying and saying _thank you, thank you, Christ and His Holy Mother bless you_ and pointing at the nightstand as she covers herself. The missing ingot sits plainly in the drawer, waiting. He wonders what it was before it was melted down. Was it crucifixes? Or small stars of David? Or old coin or small nuggets prized from the teeth of those who could no longer bite? All he wants is to never touch it again. The need to leave strikes so hard and fast it makes his head spin, and he blames the whirling feeling for what he does next: he leans quick and presses his lips to the woman's forehead.

He cannot speak anything of blessings. He is gone, he's sure, before she's even left her bed.

The question that troubles him all the way to Moscow is why he acquiesced. Why then. At least half of the other agents he knows would have bedded her within three hours of arrival, and most would have done it by charm. The rest would have shot her at the first sign of trouble. Again, he has no answer, and though he's supposed to be working on cracking Mironov's coded notebook, he thinks about his own father, how surely Illya himself—his very existence—was used against him. How often his father is used against him. Parents, children—it's more dangerous than anything he knows, worse than this notebook, worse than this Nazi gold. There are rumors of a German scientist whose daughter is in East Berlin. It's always about leverage.

When he gets to Moscow, he will hand off the notebook to the code specialists. He will hopefully never see or touch the ingots again. And in the days between missions, he will find the name of a doctor who will make sure such a situation can never happen again. The thought of being sterilized should frighten him, should insult him, but no matter how he turns the idea over in his mind, the more comforting it is. The last thing he wants in this world is a child against whom he can be used.

III.  
_London, 1972_

Gaby wakes up the way she loves best, her arm and Napoleon's crossing on Illya's chest. She loves it most for its rarity: Napoleon must still be Napoleon, no matter what the three of them are to each other, and it's not often he'll _sleep_ with them. But sometimes he does, and he sleeps soundly, Illya's arm around his shoulders. And she loves it for its sense: she can't sleep between them, gets too hot, wakes up with her hair sweat-stuck to her neck, but Illya—Illya seems to absorb the heat, his skin cooling as soon as he's still. He'll never admit it, but she knows he's happiest this way, too—happiest in the heat, like a great big cat, and still as fickle with when he'll be petted.

This morning, Illya seems content to be still, feigning sleep, though she sees the thin blue slit of his watching. She walks her fingertips up Napoleon's arm until she reaches the crook of his neck and then his hair. She combs through it, and Napoleon shifts, presses closer to Illya and the pillow as though he can ward off waking. One of Napoleon's legs tucks over Illya's; he makes a little grumbling noise and passes back into sleeping languor. Illya bats her hand away from Napoleon but consents to kissing her, slow and lush and full of promise. A little more sleep, and _then_ , the kiss says. She moves her head to Illya's shoulder, presses as close as she is able, and Illya can't stop the upward tilt of his mouth. When she touches the corner of his lips, just once, to say _I saw that_ , his purses them in a silent _sssh_ that is also another kiss.

***

Later, they go out to dinner, all three of them together. The long table linens mean she can slip off her shoes and rest her bare feet where Illya and Napoleon's legs press together. Illya will be pleased Napoleon's taken to wearing a knife at his shin, something as slim as a sliver of bone. There's another in the same place on Illya's leg. That there's never a line out of place in their suits, no matter that they're armed to the teeth, still thrills her.

On their walk home, Napoleon insists they cross Trafalgar Square. Illya makes a disparaging remark about British military incompetence, simply to make it, maybe in case Waverly is listening. He's even smiling a little, his hand cupped over hers where she holds his arm. Despite the knowledge that they might be off to Copenhagen or New York or even smuggling themselves into Havana in the morning, she's happy. She might be happier than she's ever been.

Napoleon makes a slow circuit of the bronze lions, smiling benevolently at a few children up rather too late and trying to scrabble up onto their wide, sleek backs. He leans in close, takes a discarded bottle cap from a shadowed place in the hollow of one beast's elbow.

"You'll pick up anything," Illya says, shaking his head.

"Don't I know it." Napoleon looks pointedly at both of them.

Gaby has come to read the next particular stoic set of Illya's mouth as his public grin for Napoleon's jokes. She squeezes his arm and he returns the pressure gently. But Napoleon is still holding the bottle cap, frowning a little at it, and he doesn't follow as Illya turns them in the general direction of their flat. The three of them never walk in together, but Napoleon is listing in another direction entirely.

He says, "I have to make a quick detour." The bottle cap has disappeared into his pocket.

"Thirsty?" she says. What she would like is for Napoleon to follow them home so they can carry on with their marvelous show of sensualist decadence because surely they're going to be in some unheated cabin north of Helsinki after this. That's how it always goes.

"Something like that." His grin is sudden, bright. "Nothing to worry about."

"Cowboy." Illya's mouth goes as tight as it always does in cases like this. If it was a beautiful woman Napoleon was setting out after, Illya would be indulgent, a little mocking, and she'd pretend to be outraged. Sometimes, Napoleon tells them about what happened, how he fucked her, how he used his mouth, and he holds Gaby while Illya does the same to her. Sometimes, he takes a long shower, rinses away any trace of someone else's scent, and falls asleep beside them. Sometimes, he doesn't come back until breakfast, but then he always brings pastries.

"Honestly. If I'm not back in an hour, you can come find me." Napoleon clicks his heels together, acknowledging the tracker that's surely embedded in the heel of his shoe. Since Morocco, she thinks both Illya and Napoleon agree that Illya still bugs them both not because he doesn't trust them, but because he doesn't trust anything else in the world.

In these nine years, Illya has learned to take Napoleon at his word. So they walk in one direction and Napoleon walks in another. Illya doesn't even look over his shoulder, and she's somehow _proud_ of him. She's still trying to decide what odds she'd lay against the plans for the rest of the evening, though. If she's going to end up speeding hell-bent for leather through Isle of Dogs, she'd prefer to be wearing trousers and flats.

When she and Illya get back to the flat, he goes directly to the case for his tracker, and he undoes the zipper on her dress with one hand while he turns the machine on with the other. He watches her lacy underwear fall with a little disappointment, but the heated look he gives her when she buttons the trousers and rolls up the sleeves on a terribly plain shirt is incredibly satisfying.

When he gets Napoleon's signal, it's at the back of the building, and then it's in the stairwell, and they're looking at the door a little guiltily as he steps through it, an envelope in his hand. He shakes his head at them, makes a little _tsk_ between his teeth, and goes to hang his jacket.

"I said I'd be right back."

"You said that in Morocco," she says.

"And in Barcelona." Illya is already following Napoleon toward the bedroom, and she's slipping up beside him, plucking the envelope from Napoleon's hand.

"What's this?" It's thin and light, can't hold much. If it wasn't anything either of them could see, it would never come into the flat. But this has, and so she's looking. The cancellation on the stamp is from Chile, and the address is strange: a P.O. box and a name she doesn't recognize but assumes is one of Napoleon's many aliases. "South America? Did you make a pen pal?" They were in Santiago five years ago, and the whole time, Illya jumped at shadows. He said he'd been there before, not long before they all met.

Illya, who has been amused by all this, suddenly stills, turning toward Gaby and thrusting out his hand. "Give it to me."

She surprises herself when she does. When it's in Illya's hand, though, he only stares at Napoleon. "What—" he says, and nothing follows.

Napoleon takes the envelope back. "We'll see." He opens it all at once, and Illya looks at him like he's holding nuclear launch codes. What he's really holding is a newspaper clipping—an obituary for a man named Rigoberto Silva y Torres—and a photograph of a little girl with brown hair and a serious face. On the back of the photo, in pencil so faint Napoleon has to hold it up against the light and read the lead shimmer rather than the tint, there is a name. _Magdalena Concepción_.

He holds out the image, and when Illya doesn't take it, Napoleon lifts his hand and puts it in Illya's palm. There the image sits, and Gaby looks close at it. There is something familiar in the girl's jaw, in the shape of her nose, in the sober set of her mouth. She looks like Illya. Gaby turns her gaze on Illya, fixes it there until he fully regards the photo.

"She is...yours." As soon as she says it, Gaby is certain. The words feel right. She says, "You have a daughter." It's important to name things. There are so many things between them they can't name. But this, this is concrete, and Illya startles, recoils, but the shake of his head is arrested by a falling nod. She can see him bracing himself against something. All she has is questions—not accusatory, but curious—and some answers she is slowly putting together.

She says, "Did you see her? When we were in Santiago?"

He shakes his head. "She has a father. A real father." The way he says it, she is certain he struggled with it. She wonders if he went to the house, if he allowed himself to know anything. By the fraught look on his face, she thinks not. She knows now the toll that takes, the self-control to not-know what he could, easily. 

Napoleon is reading the newspaper clipping. "Had a father," he says, and he holds it out. The man died at age fifty-five, two months ago. A mining accident in which three men died, none of them men of any consequence save to their mothers, wives, children, brothers. Rigoberto Silva has left behind the daughter and his wife, Maria Theresa. Illya's attention flickers there for a moment.

"An accident? You think, truly?" Illya's hands fist in his lap. Gaby takes his left between her own. He's not angry. He's something else.

Napoleon regards the obituary, seems to be considering something else in his mind, and finally he nods. "An accident. A mine can be a terrible place." He settles in closer, and he takes Illya's other hand, and this is something Illya never lets them do. Slowly, the story comes out, and it doesn't trouble her that Napoleon knew it first, and long ago. She was the first to know _Illya_. And here they both are, anyway, listening to how it happened, which is entirely new to both of them. She's most surprised that Napoleon didn't seek out the rest of the story himself, by whatever method this notice and photo has come to him. Maybe it's because Napoleon already knew more than Illya. The obituary is the first time Illya has allowed himself to know the woman's name.

She rests her head upon Illya’s shoulder as he talks in the plain, heartbreaking way he has for listing his own failures. 

"It," he says, "it was not even nice," like he's talking about something else and not the impersonal sex he had with this woman, and his head hangs again. 

"Nice wasn't the point," Napoleon says. "It was a kindness still." 

Illya remains unconvinced. She understands why, she thinks. No matter what happens to this child, it will weigh on him. There is something soft in the way he looks at the photo, and that frightens him more than even what rests between the three of them. 

It is Napoleon who takes the picture from Illya's palm, and he walks into the kitchen with it. Gaby waits for the acrid smell of burning paper, the sound of water running in the sink, but all that follows is the snap of a magnet on the refrigerator door. He's hung it up. 

Illya barks out a laugh and covers his face with his hands, but he allows it to remain, allows them to lead him to bed. They'll stay together tonight again, all three. 

*** 

When Magdalena is twenty-one, she marries a carpenter from a good, honest family. Shortly afterward, the new couple finds that they've won a lottery—nothing vast enough to attract undue notice, but enough that Magdalena and her carpenter will have a comfortable house, one large enough that her mother can live with them. Napoleon had wanted to sell a Rembrandt for the occasion.

"You don't have a Rembrandt," Illya said.

"Getting one would be part of the occasion," Napoleon said, grin big enough that she almost took his side, but Illya said no. Under no circumstances. It was enough that he assented to the lottery charade. But Illya is, even by Napoleon's standards, acceptably grateful.

On that day, too, the three of them get uproariously drunk, no matter that hangovers are far more vicious on the far side of age fifty, and Illya lets go what threads he held in Santiago. The girl is no longer a girl, but a woman, and by what accounts they can muster, happy.

***

One day in 1992, Illya disappears. Napoleon had gone to the Tate Modern and Gaby had gone for a good walk and to the shops for milk—and gin—leaving Illya at home with his stack of newspapers. Though Waverly uses them most as consultants now, his trio of spies who would be retirement age were they in any other position, Illya leaves nothing to chance. He reads the world news voraciously, and he and Napoleon argue over what is thinly veiled near-disaster and what is propaganda from one corner or another and what is only Illya's wishful, suspicious thinking. Gaby laughs at them both, and she knows she and Napoleon are both glad that Oleg died of his shriveled black heart years ago. The Cold War is over, officially, and the new regime doesn't want to send a man in his sixties out into the field anymore. But still—Illya is always prepared. In case.

So when she returns to the flat and Illya is gone, the papers still spread everywhere, she checks his bedside drawer. His gun is gone. She checks the case where he keeps his father's watch still, though it was broken past repair in 1974, in Bucharest. The watch, too, is gone, and certainly it's on his wrist, a talisman, though he would reject that word. She doesn't have to look in his closet, count jackets or belts or shoes. He's gone.

That no panic rises in her throat is a sign that she should be worried. Her body is already responding as _mission_ , where fear and caution are unavoidable, but panic has no place. She sits in his chair and spreads out the newspapers. What would have made him rush away, not a word to anyone? She sees nothing any different than the news has been for the past three years, Communism collapsing slowly here and quickly there, and Illya has been strangely indifferent to most of it. But she can't _read_ all the languages before her. 

Still, by the time Napoleon breezes into the flat, she's got her engagement ring against her mouth, alternately chewing on it and saying _Illya_ and _dummkopf_.

Napoleon pulls up short, gaze immediately on the scattered newsprint. He says, "Where's Peril?" The nickname is not so often on his lips these days; they seldom need to say each other's names. Their attention is always already where it's needed.

Gaby can't help kicking the table a little. Though she hasn't kicked anyone in years, she still makes good enough contact to stagger the wood and glass and make two of the sheets fall to the floor. "I had hoped you knew." She twists her fingers in her necklace, keeping the ring close to her mouth, and when Napoleon doesn't chide her for putting stress on a Piaget chain, she knows he doesn't know where Illya is. But he's already looking for something, she can see that.

"You don't think it's T.H.R.U.S.H." If it were, she reasons, Illya wouldn't have simply disappeared.

The noise Napoleon makes is doubtful, but he's been in the game long enough to never rule them out. He reaches _El Mercurio_ , the Chilean daily that Gaby ordered for Illya because she wants to know what is happening in the place Illya's daughter is—where his granddaughter is. Magdalena's little girl is seven now. They have never seen a picture of her, but they talk about her. For the three of them, this invisible child is the only one they have.

Napoleon stops, and there he pages slowly. On the fourth page, he stops on a small article, little more than a crime blotter report. There was a raid on a small town, north of Santiago. Antonio Torres and his wife, and nine other people whose names mean nothing to either of them are dead, their children missing. There is no mention of a cause. Enough people have become _desaparecidos_ in various parts of South America that this news is no news at all.

As soon as he stops there, she remembers: the carpenter, Magdalena's carpenter, had this name. Maria Theresa died two years ago, an old woman with a granddaughter, and Gaby suddenly feels glad for that woman's sake, that that woman had not lived to see this moment. Nowhere in the article is a child named. 

She contacts Waverly. Napoleon calls someone whose name she will never know. No one can even say where Illya has gone. Something in her gut says it is not Santiago. He's somewhere else, and she even calls a phone number she has seen Illya dial before. He's never shared the number, but he knows both she and Napoleon would remember the particular purring sequence of the rotary dial. The line leads to nothing, not even a disconnection recording. 

She drums her fingers on her knee for twenty seconds, and then she goes to Illya's tracker case. Napoleon kisses the side of her neck and removes her necklace in one quick movement, tucks it safely into her jewelry box. She'll never live down losing the Tiffany pendant in Venice. 

"We have a flight at eleven," he says, and he's changing his suit even as she's squinting at the screen. When they get to Chile, they'll be able to find him. 

IV.  
_The Andes, 1992_

The altitude is harder on his sixty-five-year-old lungs than he wants to admit, and the way it makes his sleep heavy and thick is troubling, but he also has a lifetime of habit on which to draw. His body still knows how to simply keep going when his mind says it must, and maybe something in his bones understands that those days are coming to an end. His back aches with sleeping on the chill Andean ground, and it's more unsettling to lie down with no one lying against his back. It reminds him how much there is no one here to _watch_ his back. 

But that is as he designed it. His partners don't know where he is because he's not supposed to know that this place exists. He was supposed to let go those years ago, when Magdalena was married, but the world is an unquiet place and he has kept an eye everywhere he can. He tries to find the old unhopeful place in his mind. Before Rome, it was easy to find. Since after Morocco, he hasn't wanted to find it. But now it would be helpful. He knows his daughter is already dead. But one old man in the village said the men who raided the place took the girls. All of the girls.

The air is cold, and thin, and the wisest thing he can do—other than turn around and face whatever wrath Gaby and Napoleon will have for him—is prepare for the worst, not simply in the ready trigger-finger but in the traitorous hoping node that shifts from head to heart so quick he can't chase it down.

He'd willingly paid a bribe for a bush plane that deposited him at the edge of a glacial lake, snow still unmelted in thick white patches, a bribe he would have once shot a man for, a bribe large enough that even Napoleon would remark upon it. But he is an old man and somehow money has come to mean even less to him than it had before. If money could solve this, he thinks he'd use it. But these are not kidnappers seeking ransom, and he hurries as best he can. He goes along the dirt track, an eye on the tire-ruts, and tries to ignore his own younger self that would have gone through the woods, but his two much-repaired knees already hurt, and he must go the fastest way available. The tracks look newer than they should, but he doesn't know how often these agents of chaos go to and fro. 

He's not even certain this is the right place to check. His mistake lies in trusting anonymity, in being so accustomed to _targeted_ and _hunted_ that he hasn't thought much about the random violence of the world. Because he believes what Napoleon told him about Magdalena's father all those years ago: this was not by design, has nothing to do with who Illya is. This has to do with evil that behaves like fire or a great wave or most like an earthquake: there's no telling what ground will collapse, when it will ripple again. 

That doesn't make him feel better. It does make him walk faster, and when he hears gunfire, he runs toward it, cutting through the trees. 

In a clearing, there is a large building and two out-buildings, and behind one of the buildings is a knot of people, pulling children from a broken out window. By their clothing, these are the missing girls. Gunfire pins them into a tight sphere, though, and one of the adults on the circle’s edge backs up too far. The body spins and falls, and Illya is troubled most by the fact that none of the children scream. 

Behind the other building, two people in mottled peasants’ clothing take careful aim at the larger building’s windows with a hunting rifle and two old pistols, like he’s seen in American movies. A camouflage-clad man falls outward, from the big building’s second story, and doesn’t get up. 

He assesses: this is some kind of rescue, but he cannot say it’s going to be successful, unless something changes. There are too few rescuers, their path to freedom a firing zone. He cuts away from both buildings, raises his sniper rifle to his shoulder, and takes aim at the upper windows, the flickers of movement there. When his bullet strikes home, the gunfire that strikes the trees around him lights the fuse that has never left him. He fires again, and there's no more fire from that window. 

A truck roars into the clearing, more of the peasants firing cover from its metal-sheeted bed. When it stops, behind the building, the rescuers usher the young women and children into the back of it. Someone from the top of the compound fires in that direction, and one of the men on the truck crumples. 

Illya dashes, fires again. The confusion that follows—a fresh adversary, where, where, and the truck—distracts the people in camouflage long enough that all of the escapees are secured inside the vehicle. Its open back faces away from the buildings, and Illya is glad of the metal sheeting. It's some kind of protection.

Soon, one of the plain-clothes people crouches beside him, a woman with a deep scar on her dark-skinned cheek, terrible rage in her eyes. But they're aiming in the same place, and so they're allies at the moment.

"Who are you?" she says, in Spanish. 

“Help” is as much reply as he can make before another burst of bullets cut the air. He swears he can taste decay on the air. If he were to walk deeper into the surrounding forest, he knows he'll find some kind of grave, too large, too shallow, too full. 

When she breaks for the truck, he follows. The two people behind the building are firing as fast as they can, trying to seem like more than they are. This is all the cover they can muster.

In the back of the truck, there are a dozen children, four women. The women seem to be too young to be mother of any of these children, who all appear to be between six and twelve, who are all girls. The women seem mostly hurt, beaten-looking in a way that has little to do with the bruises patterning their faces. One of them holds empty arms against her chest, cradling only agony there. She's crying. He thinks he is glad Magdalena was only shot. The old man said it was quick from what he could tell. He hates this world that would make him be grateful in this way. Magdalena had a father, but she was his, too, and he is ready to tear apart this compound with his naked hands. With his teeth. 

But closest to the tailgate, one of the older children holds a girl close by the hand, the two of them crowded closer to the crisp air than anyone else, and Illya recognizes the girl at once. It doesn't matter that he's never seen her face before. She looks like her mother, her mother's mother, and a little like his own mother, when she was a girl, before she knew how ugly the world. She looks like Gaby, though there is no reason for her to do so. But when he looks at her, he sees the woman he loves, has loved, for all these years, how she might have been as a girl, light and spare. When Illya gets close, the older girl nudges the younger back, and though her hands are empty and he's holding a gun, she bares her teeth, makes her skinny frame as broad as she can. The little girl wriggles fast around her friend to look him in the face. Like Gaby, like her own mother, like his own—unafraid.

When she does, he's proud. He thinks, too, that it would be kinder to scare her— _safer_ to scare her—because this world is not kind, and she and her friend should not meet the eyes of strangers with guns. But he steps closer, as fast as he can, his attention still over his shoulder because some further catastrophe must come, always, and that is why he is not _in_ the truck. They should be in one place, and he should be in another.

But for two breaths that seem to last for hours, the girl looks _into_ him, and then she reaches for him. He catches her hand against his cheek.

 _Cuidate_ , he says. Be careful. Be safe. There is so much more he wants to tell her, but the words won't come, and what right has he to tell her anything? But there is her small hand upon his cheek. It's warm, dry, steady, and he kisses the center of her palm. There is another crackle of gunfire, shouting, behind him.

 _Cuidate_ , he says again, and he points at both of the girls, one and then the other, because the older one has not left her friend's side, and still she seems as though she would bite if he took one more step.

He says, in his own language, "I hope you never feel cold," even as the truck lurches forward, even as something explodes at the building’s front. The little girl nods, and when he gestures for them to get down, to crouch behind whatever protection the truck can offer, they do crouch. The rest of the escapees do the same. As soon as they do, he turns back toward the building.

The woman he'd spoken to before is kneeling beside one of her own men, a man who will not get up again. The man's hand scrapes her knee, falls away from the action. Illya understands: they've achieved what they've come to do because the truck is already on its way. When she speaks, it is no language he knows. He thinks it's indigenous, something belonging to this place long before Spanish did.

From the big building, he hears shouting, and the woman turns toward the sounds of living hostility. Something hisses hot and tearing in the back of his leg, just above the knee. The woman sprints toward a Jeep—belonging to the adversary—pulling him with her. He stumbles after, and she’s reaching for something in her pouches, but he shakes his head. The truck is almost out of sight, and there is a small, dark-haired head watching him. A bullet strikes the dirt behind the tires, and the woman stands and fires toward the building. Someone is beside the door. He doesn’t know how many people are still inside, but he knows how many people are in that truck. One is his granddaughter. 

He yanks the woman down, pulls the pin from a grenade, and he throws it as hard as he can. It bounces twice, explodes, ripping a gaping mouth where the door was. No one will stand there for a while. 

"I'll finish this," he says in Spanish. _Go_. He will make sure there is no one to follow the truck. He is grateful when she does go, when they all go. It is only Illya and some hive of men who have killed his daughter and who would have done worse to his granddaughter, and now he is fiercely glad that there is no one left here for whom to worry, no need for excessive care. 

No matter that he has enough explosives with him to level the building, he remembers that he is _not_ alone in this world, and now that the girl is as safe as he can assure at this moment, he can take a moment to plan. Kneeling there behind the Jeep, trying to ignore the bloody throb in his leg, the first thing that comes to mind is to rig the entire thing to blow. He could make it start, could wedge the pedals and the wheel and send the whole thing to go crashing into the gap where the front door had been. While everything burns, he could make his escape, as slow as it must be now. But someone might be left. Someone might know where the truck is going. And that, as Waverly would say, will not do. 

Illya is contemplating his other options—quickly because someone is going to get brave enough to come out soon—when a motorcycle’s hum approaches, straining with the ascent, but before it comes into the clearing, the sound dies all at once. Illya actually creeps into the Jeep; no matter that there are no doors and not much cover, it’s better than showing his naked back to whoever must be on their way. And he curses at himself. He wouldn’t have to watch his own back if he weren’t so damned stubborn. But no matter his stubbornness, he still counts himself Russia’s best—and in another lifetime, without Gaby to keep him from doing it, he’d challenge the young men he knows have already taken his place—and so he’ll deal with what is coming first. His gun is trained where the woods meet the road. 

What comes first into his sight—in the trees, not in the road, like someone who knows what he’s doing—is a man clad head to toe in camouflage. Illya would have already shot him if he didn’t recognize that particular green and brown mottle: it’s what Napoleon wore in Panama and in Cambodia. His “lucky invisibles.” A flicker of movement from the road’s opposite side reveals Gaby, or the suggestion of her, assembling a sniper rifle, the one that matches the one he’d abandoned on the other side of the complex in favor of something more direct. 

In a moment, Napoleon is crouched beside him.

“Keeping all of the fun for yourself, Peril?” He puts a hand on Illya’s bleeding leg. It hurts. It feels better.

All Illya can do is shrug. It’s all he could do the first time Napoleon caught him with his hand in his own trousers, in the absence of Gaby, many years ago. Now, as then, he’ll let Napoleon take the lead because Napoleon came into this with longer sight, from further away, and if he weren’t so used to the feeling, he’d be ashamed at the wash of relief that Napoleon’s presence brings. Age has brought Solo greater circumspection, to the benefit of the whole team. Illya feels unchanged—still headstrong, still blinded by certain angers, certain loves—except in this calm beside Napoleon, in knowing that Gaby is near and she is ready. 

Illya says what he knows, what he has seen. He has not seen any civilians, any other captives. 

“The girl?” 

“Gone,” Illya says. “Safe.” He nods, firm. Somehow, that feels correct. He’s had feelings like this before. It’s hard to trust them, but none of them have been wrong. Napoleon regards him evenly. Where the green greasepaint meets the silvered hair at his temples, it will leave a faint tint, and that will bother Napoleon until it fades. 

“Well,” Napoleon says, “that’s good news.”

“There is bad news?” Illya can’t say what Gaby and Napoleon might have seen on their way here.

Napoleon counts the grenades that he and Illya have between them. He duct-tapes half a dozen of them to the Jeep’s front seat, and he says, “That depends,” as he sets a small charge with a ten-second timer on top of them. Just enough to encourage things along. Illya ducks under the steering wheel and hotwires the vehicle, jamming down the gas. He’s not as quick as he used to be; the frame knocks into his shoulder as the Jeep leaps forward. But Napoleon is there to steady him, and he levels his pistols at the door even as Gaby’s first shot pierces an upstairs window. “That depends completely on whether you survive this for the hiding you’re going to get for leaving and not telling her.” 

When the explosion’s heat blooms, Illya actually laughs behind the cover of his arm. 

 

V.  
_London, 1992_  
When they get back to London, the only proof that anything happened at that site is Illya’s wound, jetlag, and a kind of exhaustion they’ve never felt before. They can find nothing at all about the woman Illya had spoken those very few words to, no sign at all, via any of the channels any of them has ever known. Even the people who'd been the ones to tell him about the compound have no idea what he's talking about. There's such a bewildered quiet about it that, were he someone else, he might start to doubt he'd been there himself, that he'd seen anything at all. But those are not things he doubts. Not even the woman who'd arranged Magdalena's lottery can offer anything, and none of the answers any of them get are frightened. All three of them know the _I don't know_ of the terrified, no matter how good the acting. The truck, and the rescuers and rescued who'd left with it, has simply disappeared.

He can't explain why it doesn't bother him more. It should. He knows it should. That truck could have taken those children anywhere, and common sense—and everything he's seen in his own life—suggests that the likelihood for _worse_ is higher than _better_. But even in the middle of the night when he's awake with the pain in his knees that is never really gone, there is some quiet feeling in his chest. She's all right. She will be all right. She looked him in the eye and she was unafraid. When he was a boy, his mother said she had feelings like that, assurances that floated through the air and rested on her palm, like thistledown. She'd always been right: her father would die peacefully, in his sleep; young Illya would do well on all his tests, she just knew it; the stray cat he'd tried to bring into the house as a little boy would be perfectly well outdoors, and live a long and happy life. When he left home, the cat was as old as he was, or older, and though it stretched a little stiffly, no other cat dared sleep upon the highest part of the stone wall, where the sun struck it best.

He remembers, too, that she'd never said, _Your father will be fine. He'll be home soon, Illyusha._ She never lied to him. So he trusts the feeling. But if the girl is still alive, she might be anywhere, and he finds himself looking for her here and there. If he gets a coffee at a cafe, he lets himself search for what her face might be like in a crowd. He thinks, if he saw her, he'd know.

That surety is how he knows he's getting old. That fact alone should be enough of a surprise. But Gaby holds his hand when they're in public and says he's right, he'd know. Napoleon hooks an ankle around Illya's even when there's no tablecloth to cover them, and sometimes the casual arm across the chair-back folds around Illya's shoulder as his eyes pick over passersby. Everything in his life, Illya decides, has turned out to be surprising.

VI.  
_London, 2011_

The three of them still go out, though they go earlier than they used to, and even Gaby and Napoleon will acquiesce to a quiet pub now and then. It is on one of those nights, the three of them in a booth, half-watching a football match on television, when a queer prickling comes across the back of his neck. He leans forward like he’s rubbing his knees, trying to see further into the room, and he is surely too old: there are booths he can’t see from here. Forty—even twenty years ago—he would have refused to sit here. 

Gaby and Napoleon are discussing this Sherlock Holmes, whose face Illya sees on newspaper fronts and on the television, sometimes before or after the silver-haired Yarder. At home, Gaby likes to brandish her highball toward Detective Lestrade’s attractive talking face. What she wouldn’t do with _that_ , she says, because she knows it will still get Illya to curl his arm around her waist, tug her close, and Napoleon will say, “Not if I get there first,” and Illya has to put his other arm around Napoleon, and they’ve all got exactly what they wanted. 

Tonight is not much different, except for the feeling that someone has said something in this space that he should have heard and didn’t. There is some expectant echo, but whatever caused it is gone. Napoleon rests one warm hand on Illya’s knee, and no matter the circumstance, the heat does feel good. He tries to re-engage in the conversation: would Holmes make a good spy? All three of them have seen him in various parts of the city, unmistakable with his long coat and trailing doctor, and Napoleon once stole his glove, simply to say he’d done it. He’s stolen and returned John Watson’s wallet twice, though that’s hardly fair, given that the man looks like he never sleeps.

They all come to the same conclusion: Holmes wouldn’t make a good spy. He certainly seems to have certain helpful skills, and perhaps he could fade into a role for a time, but Napoleon shakes his head. Holmes is too prickly, too particular. For all that the three of them have their tics, it’s undeniable that they all have a certain malleability—and a comfort in it. Holmes likes being himself too much.

The peculiar feeling doesn’t go away, though, and as they’re walking out of the pub, Illya looks in each booth. He clearly disrupts a date between two young people and makes two men’s conversation about the football match come to a complete deadened silence because though he uses two canes to walk to take some of the pressure off his knees, he does not stoop, and age has not impeded his ability to glare. Still, there’s no sign of what caused the strange feeling, and neither Gaby nor Napoleon noticed anything. 

***

Weeks later, Gaby is watching the news, watching a press release about a royal of some sort. The theoretical concept of royalty still makes him chafe, but she says it reminds her of Waverly, and that, even Illya will agree, is no bad thing. He is surprised to find that he genuinely misses the man, even now, eight years after his passing. So he swallows the dismissive noise that comes into his throat all on its own and instead he combs his fingers through her hair. He can still get lost here, so lost that he almost doesn’t look up when Gaby says, “Illya, that dress.” 

He still loves picking things for her to wear, and if someone in this ridiculous panoply is wearing something she likes, he’ll take the inspiration as it comes. Gaby is pointing at someone on the right of the screen, and as his gaze sweeps toward it, he’s frozen. 

In the background, there is a young woman in a black pantsuit, and she is just now looking up from her mobile. Gaby’s finger is actually tapping the screen but he can’t look where she’s looking. He can only look at this young woman and a face he swears he knows. 

In a moment, Gaby is looking there, too, and then Napoleon is taking the photo of Magdalena from Illya’s wallet, the wallet Illya didn’t even feel him take, and the feed cuts away even as Napoleon holds it to the screen. 

“Wait,” Illya says, as though he could bring the image back, and Gaby is already reaching for her mobile phone—she can find the broadcast again, she’s certain—and Napoleon is looking at the worn photo in his hand. 

“Illya,” he says, “we’ll find her.” 

VII.  
_London, 2011_

Finally, through contacts Waverly left, they have located the young woman, and every detail of the process has felt like finding another spy, like peering through keyholes. It’s only because of Waverly—still looking after them, even after he’s gone—that they get anywhere at all, and that is through a man called Mycroft Holmes. She heard Waverly mention him once, but Holmes—brother to the detective, for the world is too small—knows everything about them. He knows everything, that is, except this one thing, about Illya and the young woman in the background of someone else’s press conference. When she hears him go speechless on the other end of the line, she wishes she could see it. But they’ll all see each other, soon enough, and she thinks there will be more surprise than a simple fact for this Mycroft Holmes.

Illya moves between being too paralyzed to speak of it and demanding the whole meeting be called off. It’s madness, he says, it can’t be her, even though Gaby can see the faraway thing in him that says it _must_ be her, and maybe that is the most frightening part. Because what will the young woman say? _You let me go? You walked away?_

And Gaby cannot reassure him on that count. She knows what she felt when she saw her father again, and though that was so many kinds of different she cannot begin to count, it is also the same, for all families are alike. She’s read Chekhov. 

***

They are to meet at a country estate—beyond London, far enough beyond that Napoleon makes wary faces at the farmland as the hired car proceeds. He’s never liked to be more than a kilometer away from an excellent espresso, and she can’t say she blames him. But Napoleon’s dislike for rural settings is his business today. She clasps Illya’s hand in both of hers, and Napoleon’s fingers knead gently at his shoulder. Illya only stares straight ahead. 

When the car stops, they have no choice but to exit and approach the front door. A leggy white cat is sitting on the seat of a very fine BMW motorcycle, and Gaby lowers her sunglasses to get a better look at the bike when the cat leaps down and presses against Illya’s shins. When Napoleon reaches down to touch its ears, it melts away from his fingertips, only to stand taller, put its front paws on Illya’s knee so that Illya must reach down and absently rub the white ears. 

While they’re stopped, the front door opens, and there is Mycroft Holmes, inviting them in. Napoleon, thankfully, is charmingly functional for all three of them, and Holmes is nearly perfect in return, though Gaby sees his gaze caught strangely on the cat, who leaves one last smatter of white fur on Illya’s dark trousers before returning to its seat on the motorbike. 

Illya is the last of them inside, and he goes slowly through the hall, but it isn’t because he’s leaning heavily on his canes. He’s scared. She’s never seen him scared like this, something so different from fear for one’s life. But soon they come into a room—just a living room, good and comfortable, the way the one in their flat has become—and there is Detective Inspector Lestrade, of all people, sitting on the end of a sofa, leaning toward the young woman Illya had seen on television. They’ve been talking, but at the sound of footsteps, the talking stops, and the doorway to the room means that Napoleon is shielding Illya, letting him come in at his own pace. She sees his hand land on Illya’s, sees Napoleon take the cane under his own hand. If there were space, he’d twirl it. He always does. But no one can do anything—they’re all fixed until Illya edges forward, and the young woman stands. 

In three long steps she’s holding Illya’s hand against her cheek, and Illya’s left-hand cane falls to the floor as his arm comes around her. Gaby hears his muttered Russian, muted in her hair, and the young woman is nodding against his shoulder. She says, “I remember you.” 

Mycroft Holmes stares as though he has never seen its like, just for a moment, and then he recovers, says, quietly, “A cup of tea, Miss Teller, Mr. Solo?” His arm sweeps back toward the hallway.

The detective adds, with good cheer, “Or coffee. Or something stronger.” Napoleon reaches to shake the man’s hand, and they leave Illya and Magdalena’s child to themselves. 

***

For what feels like an eternity and a heartbeat, he can only stand there, cleaving to the young woman, and she’s more than half holding him up, he knows. When finally they move, they sit, and she is still holding his hand. 

He shouldn’t say it, not so soon, but he has to know. “After I first saw you—you were all right?”

The expression changes and her head tilts. She says, “In time.” He is certain that story will contain things he would not like to hear. Her face smooths and she says, “Eventually, I met Mr. Holmes. I would have had nothing, had you not arrived, those years ago.” 

He says, “I wish—” but there’s no sense in finishing it, and she knows that, too. He says, “Mr. Holmes is your—” and lets the space for her to fill, if she chooses. If Waverly thought well enough of Holmes to leave this breadcrumb trail for them, to say his name once in front of them, then Illya will accept the man has some kind of worth. He has certainly been accommodating today.

“Employer,” she says, and something changes around her mouth, something secretive like it belongs to Gaby, and he swears his heart will burst with some feeling he cannot name. But she says, too, “And mentor.” Unprompted, she says Mr. Holmes and Detective Inspector Lestrade are together—perhaps so he will not ask what Lestrade is to her, either, or to explain why he is here at all—and there again she smiles, some unrestrained delight in it. 

She says, then, with a little gesture toward where the kitchen must be, from where the quiet murmur of voices comes, because it is only fair, and because she has eyes, “And you?”

He says something he has never _said_ to anyone before. “Both of them I love, and have.” He takes a deep, slow breath, and he finds it hard to look at her now. He’s not ashamed, will never be made to feel ashamed of his feelings for Gaby and Napoleon both, not after so much time, but to say it aloud—it is decadent and fraught and fragile. He has felt less bare strung up against a Havana warehouse wall in his underclothes, and yet, to say it is wonderful. To say it to someone who did not already know is a revelation.

She doesn't let go of his hand. She says, "I'm glad." 

With that in the open, he thinks to ask again, more broadly; surely she will know she’ll see no censure from him. “Is there anyone?” 

Her head shakes a negative, but she says, “Perhaps someday,” and he thinks she means more than that she is young, that she has a whole life ahead to look, but that is a story, too, for another time. 

For a time, then, they are quiet, only looking at each other, looking for pieces of themselves, and then one of them will ask a question: does he live in London? Yes, now, and for years. And he is frighteningly happy to hear that the same is true for her, when she is not traveling with Mr. Holmes. Does she ride the motorbike? She does, and she’s pleased to hear that Gaby will want to know all about it. 

The next question comes to mind and he feels like an idiot, how he couldn’t have asked it before, how he didn’t manage to find out before they even came, like he wasn’t a _spy_ for most of his adult life. But now he cannot bear not-knowing: 

“What is your name?” 

“Anthea.”

He knows that can’t be the name her mother gave her, and from what he knows of Mycroft Holmes now, if she wanted to know what name was on a birth certificate for her somewhere, she could find out. But that life is not hers anymore, and the name, he thinks, suits her. 

There is so much more to say—a lifetime of more—but all he can do is marvel. What has he ever done in his life to deserve this, to deserve this much? 

All at once she stands, and his first thought is _no_ , not yet, but she is only asking if he would like something to drink, which is a chance, too, for her to meet Gaby and Napoleon better, and for him to learn more about Mycroft Holmes. 

She is holding one of his canes, but she takes his hand to help him up, and he lets her, lets her help him the way he won’t let Napoleon, most days, and he can feel the strength in her arm, see the fluidity of motion. When he is out in the city, sometimes seeing the young men in the park running and diving after a football the way he could no longer do fills him with a deep, black bitterness. When he was young, he never expected he would live to be old. But he feels none of that now. He is only happy. He had been happy a year ago, his lovers at his side, and he didn’t think anything could improve that circumstance. But he was wrong, as he has been wrong many times in his life. And as was true at certain other times, he is content to be so. 

As they make their way into the hallway, she keeps his hand in hers. Not to steady him, but for the same reason he doesn’t let go: where their hands meet, nearly two decades and ten thousand kilometers disappear. That they knew each other for a mere minute makes no difference.

He says, “Your hands are warm.” If circumstances were any different, he’d have both of his hands in his pockets. Napoleon will have his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up in the kitchen, and Gaby will have shrugged off her cape to reveal bare shoulders. They will both likely be flirting with the detective.

As they step into the kitchen, he sees he’s right: Napoleon and Gaby have bracketed Lestrade, though he seems to be holding his own, and Holmes is laughing at something Gaby’s said. As Anthea pulls out a chair for him beside Napoleon, she says, quietly, “I have never been cold.” 

When she sits beside him, both Gaby and Napoleon stop what they're doing to look, and the feeling is so much he has to clear his throat, hide his face behind a teacup. Anthea starts to tell him about the last time she was here—visiting with Lestrade’s family—and the whole room seems sunlit. 

_How shall we finish this?_ says the voice in the back of his mind, jewel-bright and joyous, a near breathless echo of a long ago he thought he'd made himself forget, but the voice is wrong. There are yet more beginnings, even now, and here they are, holding together the pieces.

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely never meant to write this, but Illya Kuryakin happened. So this is my one-shot appeasement to the fandom gods. Happy New Year!


End file.
